


people often leave marks (i'm glad the ones you left were scars)

by skyesward



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 16:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyesward/pseuds/skyesward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you're twenty three, she's god knows what, and you realise she has forever but you really don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	people often leave marks (i'm glad the ones you left were scars)

**Author's Note:**

> mostly just the unavoidable downfall of carmilla/laura. vvv laura-centric.

The inevitable break up takes place when you're twenty three, she's god knows what and you've been living together in your new apartment for just about a year and you realise she has forever but you really don't. 

//

It starts off so painfully simple, with an offhand comment she makes when you suggest you go on vacation together and she says  _sweetheart, we can go for a holiday another time_  and you think and you find that she can spend the rest of her eternal life saying  _maybe tomorrow_  but you only have less than a fraction of what she has and you finally see what people mean when they say relationships are doomed when you’re at different stages of your life. But either way you smile, you nod and you let out a soft murmur of yes and the subject is dropped, at least for the meantime, but that moment of little significance to anyone else, to you, is the beginning of the end.

Then the small pieces of the domino start lining themselves up in a way you've never expected them too and every little thing she does so cavalierly starts to get under your skin and before you know it, you’ve tipped off the first piece and every single thing it’s taken you three years to build comes falling down, piece by piece, slowly but all at once, and soon you’re both standing in the ruins of something that used to be your world.

You’re the one who brings it up first because you know that no matter how indifferent she may appear, she’ll never be the one to break your heart. You both know it's a long time coming and so you speak the words that come out as barely a whisper but judging by the wince that graces her features you’re sure they’ve been spoken. They hang in the silence between you for more than a moment and you’re not sure what to expect because you’re still in love with her and you know she’s still in love with you but there’s just so much in the situation you have no control over that everything that’s been left unsaid for so long is packed into that bleak silence you both revel in.

It’s the calm before the storm, and you both know it is because it escalates from her voice cracking as she asks _why_ and you softly saying _you know why_ to a full out shouting match that you’re sure passers-by on the streets below you can’t help themselves from hearing. That night you toss and turn in your bed that’s empty for the first time in years and you wait all night for the person lying on the couch to fill the void in the other half of the bed and to huddle up around you but she never does. And so you fall asleep for less than two hours, memories running fresh in your mind as the choked sobs you stifle with a pillow that’s just in reach escape, and the tears that fall and subsequently form warm patches around you.

In the cold light of day you reach to your right (she’s always insisted on the right side of the bed, and you’ve never thought to question it, but now you take a moment to wonder) only to be greeted with blurry vision caused by unrepentant tears and an empty space. However when you blink open your eyes to brave the new day soft kisses are trailing down your neck and before you can protest she’s nibbling on your collarbone because she knows you can never resist it and so against your better judgement you flip her over and soon enough your lips are hot on hers’ and your hands tangle themselves in her curls. She’s doing that thing where her hands are close but not close enough and her lips are conquering every crevice of your body and between warm kisses you manage to bring across the sentiment that this doesn’t fix everything but you’re not even sure if she’s heard and you’re not even sure if you care because you’re undone beneath her like you’ve been so many times before and even if it feels like it’s the first time you know deep down it’s going to be your last. 

And so you take note of every moment of the encounter and you commit to memory the way her breath hitches when you kiss up her thighs and the way she says your name over and over, sometimes slowly and quietly and sometimes so loud it rings in your ears as if it were a prayer of some sort and she loses herself in your hand yet again.

When you finally pull apart you’re bowing your head in shame and licking your lips sinfully and she has that stupid smirk plastered on her lips and you want to kiss it off her but you know you can't and so instead you remember the way her smile tilts and the way her voice lilts as she says  _enjoy yourself, cutie?_

The most difficult thing you have to do in your short existence is gather the courage to say y _ou know this doesn’t change anything_ and when she nods and says  _I didn’t think it would_  as if it were the most obvious thing in the world you want so badly to shake your head and take it all back but you know you can’t because it would just lead to something you would regret even more. The way she looks at you makes you feel like she truly understands because she gives you the very same smile she did all those years ago in that stuffy dorm room when she tried to comfort you for the first time of many, and when her hand lands on your shoulder in a reflexive show of comfort it's so quick you think you’ve imagined it. But it's out there and so are the words you've spoken so you both prepare yourself for the end. 

The rollercoaster ride that is the hugest and last fight you’ll ever have with her end with you stepping off of it midway with a  _I guess we’re over then, huh?_  And after you’ve left she seems to hang on for a few more moments, maybe out of respect, maybe out of nostalgia, before she leaves just to empty a space between the both of you she fills with a  _I guess so, creampuff_.

At the end of it the both of you know one of you has to vacate the apartment and so she volunteers with a simple  _cupcake, i really can afford another place_  and you want to say it's really not about that but you know better and so you hope she understands. Instead you simply nod because you know it's for the best and because you know that material things have never been high on Carmilla Karnstein's list of priorities. 

She's packed and ready to go less than five hours after the flames of all the hopes of your future together burn out and the air around the both of you is heavy as she carries less than two boxes of belongings and that's when you realise maybe she won't remember you after all. (you never find out she keeps a picture of the both of you by her bedside for the rest of her life.) The last words she say to you wouldn't appear to mean much of anything to anyone else but the quirk of her lips paired with a tone tinted with sadness that speaks _bye, laura,_ and your first name rolls off her tongue so simply like that was the voice always meant to speak it and hearing it brings a pang to your heart but you know you have to stay strong for this and so you just wave and you direct a smile her way. You wait till you can no longer hear the faint tap of her footsteps and when you do you collapse onto the carpeted ground with a thud against the door and the tears you've been holding in start free falling and your lip is quivering and you're shaking and you barely pull yourself together even three days after it happens. (she sits on the other side of the door listening to you sob for a good few hours with tears leaking from the dark eyes you love so much and you never know.) 

//

It takes more than her leaving your apartment for Carmilla Karnstein to be removed from your life. It's not simple, because it takes you a while to even decide that you need to move on. The little reminders are the worst part of missing her. It's a pair of her favourite skinny jeans she left in the laundry and forgot to take with her, it's the stupid yellow pillow that still smells strangely of the lavender body wash she adores, and it's a carton of blood she leaves in the fridge, her worn copy of The Great Gatsby hiding behind a couch cushion, her vinyl record left in the player you bought together a few months ago. She’s present in the bed that still contains the dent left by months of use by her, and your favourite sweater with her red lipstick stain on it, in the recorded vampire diaries episodes or even the article Carmilla helped you edit, and it's in all the things you previously thought were insignificant and inconsequential that you realise getting over her will take more than an iron will and physical space between the both of you.

The breakup is the beginning of what your friends like to call the "dark days" (incredibly ironic considering who it was in reference to), where you would go days without food, earphones plugged in, watching your old video logs from college, sobs contributing to a growing pile of tissues by your bedside. It wasn’t until one day Perry has enough of your “moping around” and takes it into her own hands to enter your musty apartment, cleaning utensils in hand, dragging you away from the laptop, pulling open the heavy drapes, and forcing you to face the world for the first time in weeks.

And so you decide with their help that the best way to leave the relationship behind is to leave the home that was meant to be the pair of yours in the past, along with her. You're lucky in the sense that you manage to find a buyer who's willing to buy it for far more than you offered at the expense of their privacy, and you assume that they're probably just some sort of a public figure and so you count your lucky stars and you take it as the universes' sign that you did the right thing and you try to move on. 

Every day is a debatable uphill from there, excluding that one time you were cleaning out your bedroom and found that ridiculous bat bracelet stuffed below your mattress, the same bracelet that hangs around your wrist as you sob and a playlist you made for carmilla once upon a time serves as a background track.

And so you find that as much as you would like to believe you were over the beautiful vampire that was once your whole world, you find yourself comparing every blind date to a certain broody beauty, and every unfortunate pet name a date calls you still reminds you of the hole left in your heart by Carmilla Karnstein.

//

Sometimes, you swear you can see her. (This was obviously impossible, since she’d left years ago.) Your friends insist it’s just you longing for a relationship that could have been, and given no other feasible explanation, you choose to agree. It’s far worse closer to the apartment you used to live in together, where sometimes you could see the outline of the person standing by the window from across the street and you truly believe that it’s the same curves your hands have wondered one too many times in the shadows but decide that you should accept the more possible scenario and so you wipe your mind of the sight as you walk away, trying desperately not to turn back.

You think you see remnants of her in the people you meet every day, like sometimes you go get a coffee and the disinterested look in the teenage baristas’ eye reminds you so much of her, or you hear her voice in a television advertisement where the person is reading her favourite novel aloud, or even the twinkle in her eye when she used to smile at you in the lady who grins from across the street, and yeah, over the years it gets easier to live without her, but it’s never easy enough, and you’re never happy enough.

The life you live is the best you can without her, and you think maybe you could really make it work.

//

You find out you’re dying on a cold Wednesday afternoon, with your hands twitching and your heart racing, and the look on the doctors’ face says all that needs to be spoken. She looks at you like you’re glass that’s about to be broken, and you can’t say you truly blame her because you feel the same way. You’re fifty seven, and your first thought is to wonder how many of your lifetimes Carmilla has lived in hers. You tell La Fontaine and Perry at the same time and you can see their intertwined hands squeezing each other’s and although they plaster on a smile you still manage to catch the look of anxiety and worry that comes before. They say it's stage four cancer and there’s nothing more they can do and so you admit yourself into the hospital and you wait for your time to come.

They ask for what you’d like to do before you no longer have the chance to and the only think that comes to mind is the beautiful girl with the dark eyes and the rare smile but you don’t dare to speak the words because you know if you don’t hope there’s no chance of you being disappointed.

When you feel like all hope is lost and you’re not sure if you want to hang on you see a bright light and beyond it she runs into the room, breathless, yet looking just as gorgeous as she did the day she left, and there’s a grim smile on your face as you say, your voice hollowed, _you look really pretty_. Her reply almost extracts a real laugh from you ( _yeah? so do you cupcake_ ) and you sigh and your voice is weak as you speak, your voice hoarse, _I missed you, Carm._  When she says the four words you’ve hoped for years would leave her lips she garners a smile on your face amidst the dull pain in your abdomen as she says throatily, _I missed you too, cupcake_.

It hurts, so much, like it never has before, and you wince and you groan but you try and hide it from her but the look of pain that flashes across her features tells you she knows and so as you see her hold in the tears threatening to fall from her eyes she says _It’s okay, Laura, I’m right here._ And so with her words playing in a loop in your mind you fall asleep for the last time like you have infinite times before, with a smile etched clearly on your features and Carmilla Karnstein’s' hand cradling yours, and for the first time in years, you think everything might be alright after all. (Mostly because you never find out what Carmilla Karnstein is like without her light.)

 //

(you never figure out that she never really came.)

**Author's Note:**

> i might write a continuation of this from carmilla's pov because the last line really seems out of place but ????? if i find time. i promise you there's a rlly good explanation okay.


End file.
